


Aziraphale & Crowley's Ye Olde Book Club

by jibberjabber13



Series: The Ineffable Plan (to Live Happily Ever After) [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 6000 Years of Pining (Good Omens), Aziraphale's Bookshop (Good Omens), Dancing, Drunken Flirting, First Kiss, Fluff and Humor, Humor, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon, Romance, book clubs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 13:16:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20564954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jibberjabber13/pseuds/jibberjabber13
Summary: It’s been exactly 3 years, 61 days, and 41 minutes since the apocalypse stopped, and the only things Aziraphale and Crowley have been up to are starting a book club together, at Aziraphale’s insistence, and dancing around their feelings for one another.





	Aziraphale & Crowley's Ye Olde Book Club

It was a well known fact that demons did not care much for reading. Not that many of them were particularly good at it to begin with; Crowley had once asked Hastur to recite the alphabet, and he made it to around the letter J before giving up entirely. Most demons, however, were not friends with the angel Aziraphale, who had a passion for books and an even more annoying passion of convincing Crowley to do things he’d rather not—such as perusing a copy of Moby Dick in the back of Aziraphale’s bookshop. 

After rereading the same sentence thirty-two-and-a-half times, Crowley lolled his head back and groaned. “Stupid book.” He brought the novel down onto his lap with a loud smack. “Stupid angel.”

The book club had, of course, been Aziraphale’s idea. Soon after they’d sorted out all that armageddon business and survived their death sentences, they went back to life in London. It hadn’t been long before the boredom set in. Crowley started going down to the bookshop more often just to hang out, get drunk, and take the piss out of the idiots in their respective head offices. Aziraphale just kind of accepted this arrangement, knowing that somehow their lives would always be intertwined. That, and he was bored out of his wits when there wasn’t a world to save anymore.

Aziraphale approached Crowley about starting a book club somewhere around the third year of his loitering habit, suggesting that they could at least try to do something other than get drunk all the time.

Crowley had pushed his sunglasses down and looked over them. “I’ll consider it.” This was as good of a “yes” as Aziraphale was ever going to get from Crowley.

Despite reluctant acceptance and the signing of a contract that Aziraphale had personally drafted, it still took the angel another forty-three days to convince Crowley to even look at a book, much less start reading one. But he’d finally done it, and now they were going to begin their literary odyssey with the great classic Moby Dick.

Aziraphale poked his head around the corner of the shelf where he was taking inventory. He inhaled deeply, small smile on his face, and sighed. “Oh, I just love the smell of an old book. Don’t you, Crowley?”

Crowley looked at Aziraphale, stuck his tongue out, and blew a large raspberry.

Aziraphale frowned. “Mature as ever, I see.” He walked over to where Crowley sat at the table, half-finished bottle of champagne in front of him that he used to pour another round for himself. The copy of Moby Dick was still on his lap, the front cover bent so that it folded over the back. Aziraphale’s eyes widened.

“For Heaven’s sake, why are you reading it like _that_?” 

Crowley held up the book. “Like what?”

“With the…with the cover bent backwards. Crowley, that’s a rare edition, you’re going to ruin it!” Aziraphale lunged forward to snatch the novel from Crowley’s hands, but even while intoxicated the demon was quick. He snapped his arm back out of reach for Aziraphale, who stumbled forward into the table. It slid across the floor with a scraping noise, rattling the glass of champagne as it moved.

“I don’t really get this one, anyway,” Crowley said, calmly sipping his drink as Aziraphale regained his balance and dusted off the front of his suit jacket. “What’s all the big fuss about this bloody whale?”

“I’ll have you know that Moby Dick,” Aziraphale said as he took another leap towards the book, “is considered one of the greatest novels in American literature.”

Crowley dangled the book high in the air with a shit-eating grin. His free hand circled Aziraphale’s wrist, holding him back. “You’re quite adorable when you’re mad, you know that?”

Aziraphale snatched his arm away and stepped back, flush creeping onto his cheeks. “You’re insufferable,” he said with a huff. Then he headed back into the shelves, returning to his monthly inventory check, and called out to Crowley: “Just try not to destroy anything in here, alright?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll do my best, angel,” Crowley called back. When he leaned back in his chair, he found that if he craned his neck just so, he could watch Aziraphale. Accompanied by an odd, gentle feeling in his chest, he pretended to read as he looked over his novel, observing how Aziraphale treated each book he counted with care.

Briefly, he wondered if Aziraphale cared for him the same way he did for his books but dismissed the thought as ridiculous. He sighed and returned to trying to read the infernal story in front of him.

* * *

The first meeting of Aziraphale & Crowley’s Ye Olde Book Club (name decided by the former) was to commence on a chilly but sunny Wednesday afternoon. Aziraphale had set up a small space with two plush, forest green armchairs for them to relax in and miracled a fancy bottle of red wine just for the occasion. It was perfect. With a satisfied smile, he clasped his hands behind his back, heading towards the door to wait.

Crowley arrived twenty-five minutes after he was supposed to be there, his logic being that arriving just shy of a half-hour was just enough to be obnoxiously late but not so late that the other party left to go do something else. He sauntered up to the window, knocking until Aziraphale opened the door for him.

“Really? This is the one time you knock?” Aziraphale said as Crowley stepped inside. “Half the time you just waltz in here like you own the place.”

Crowley shrugged. “Yeah, well,” he said, plopping down on one of the armchairs. “It’s the first meeting. Had to make a memorable entrance.”

Aziraphale glared at him, coughed, and opened his novel to a page that had a tiny sticky note jutting out its side. He’d left dozens of those little post-its to mark passages he found particularly interesting, refusing to mar the pages with a pen, or even worse, a highlighter. Only a literal demon would do something like that to ruin a perfectly good book. When he glanced at Crowley’s copy, which he’d opened to the beginning, he saw a shock of yellow highlighter on the first line.

Of course.

Aziraphale cleared his throat and tried to suppress his annoyance. “So, what did you think?”

“Of what?”

“Of the _book_, Crowley,” he said, exasperated.

Crowley swallowed, pursed his lips, thought for a moment. “Oh, well, I especially liked the part where he, um, you know, did the thing, and it went…badly?”

Aziraphale lowered his book with a frown. “You didn’t actually read a word of it, did you?”

“In my defense, I did read the first two pages.”

After a few moments of silence, Aziraphale got up from his chair and disappeared into the shelves, headed for the back of the shop. He returned several minutes later with two empty glasses and the fancy wine he’d miracled, a cabernet from Bordeaux. Slamming the bottle down on the table earned him a surprised look from Crowley.

“Forget the book,” Aziraphale said. “Let’s just get drunk.”

Crowley smirked and adjusted his sunglasses. “Sounds alright to me.”

* * *

From where he leaned against the windowsill, his side facing the rainy and gray streets of London, Crowley slammed the thick volume of plays he held shut. A cloud of dust flew out of its pages and into the air, causing Aziraphale to cough.

“What the bloody hell do we need to read Shakespeare for? We were there when his plays premiered,” Crowley grumbled.

Aziraphale regarded Crowley with the look of an annoyed schoolteacher, peering at him over wire-framed glasses, then went back the pages before him.

“Oh, just shut up and read your damn book.”

If Aziraphale had looked over from where he sat at his desk, engrossed in his own volume of Shakespeare, he might have seen Crowley studying him with an unusual softness in his expression. But he didn’t, so the angel remained unaware of this fact.

* * *

“You know what your problem is?”

After three bottles of wine, which he and Crowley drank in lieu of a third meeting of the Ye Olde Book Club, Aziraphale was absolutely, positively, rip-roaring drunk. His speech slurred as he repeated his question. “You know what your problem is?”

He placed his hands face down on the table, which currently looked like a disaster. Spilled wine and the now-empty bottles littered the surface. Aziraphale had somehow even managed to get some of the alcohol on his trousers, a stain he’d have to spend ages cleaning once he sobered up, and cursed his drunken clumsiness.

“Mm.” A close-lipped smile spread across Crowley’s face as he raised a glass to his lips. He tilted his head in questioning. “What’s my problem, o wise one?”

Aziraphale hiccuped, then pointed a finger at Crowley. “You’re…you’re too decent for a demon,” he said. “Like that time, you know the time when I was gonna be…” With his thumb and index finger stuck out, he pretended to shoot himself in the head. “In the church with the Nazis, and then you saved me and the books. That was really pretty decent, if you think about it.”

Crowley took a slow sip of his wine, savoring the taste in his mouth before swallowing. His head buzzed pleasantly, and everything around him seemed brighter; as he approached Aziraphale’s level of drunkenness, he thought it the perfect level of intoxication for the evening. “I just considered it a favor for an old friend,” he said.

Had Crowley been less tipsy, he would have seen the flash of disappointment that crossed Aziraphale’s face, then faded as quickly as it had come. In its place, a bright smile formed. “We’re friends? You mean it?”

Crowley snorted. “After everything we’ve been through, you don’t think we’re at least friends? If not best friends.” He tilted his glass towards Aziraphale, the red liquid coming dangerously close to spilling over the edge. A small drop rolled down the side. “When your…when your shop burned down, I really thought something had happened to you.” _And the thought of that made me more upset than it ought to have_, the rest of Crowley’s thought went, but he didn’t say that part aloud.

Aziraphale pressed a hand to his heart. “Well, my dear boy, consider me touched,” he said, beaming. Then his gaze flitted across the shelves in the store, everything he might have lost had they not been able to stop the apocalypse and escape the wrath of Heaven and Hell. His eyes fell back on Crowley. Aziraphale might have lost him, too. 

They drank in silence for a few minutes.

It was Aziraphale who spoke first. “You know, I wouldn’t have minded going to Alpha Centauri with you. Might have been nice to get away from it all.”

Crowley went quiet, staring into the last sips of wine gathered at the bottom of his glass. Outside, a wind blew past the windows that whistled in the evening air. The sun had already gone down, sinking London into darkness, the early sunset a reminder that it was already late October. Despite the fact that they both had an eternity to live, the turning of the seasons always made Aziraphale feel sentimental and nostalgic.

“I mean it,” he insisted. “I just thought we needed to sort everything out with armageddon and…all that.” He waved his hand.

“You were right about that, anyway. I was being an idiot.” Crowley tipped his glass back, polished off the wine. “Of course we had to stop the fucking apocalypse.”

He got up, stumbled over to the record player Aziraphale kept in the bookshop. During business hours, he liked to play classical music at a reasonable volume to help maintain ambiance. Crowley flipped through his collection, scoffing at the options, then snapped his fingers to summon a record of his own. Slipping the 45 out of its cover, he placed it under the needle and let it play.

_Well, it’s a marvelous night for a moondance_  
_with the stars up above in your eyes._  
_A fantabulous night to make romance,_  
_‘neath the cover of October skies._

“What on Earth are you doing?” Aziraphale said. “I don’t own this record.”

“Of course you don’t,” Crowley said. “It’s Van Morrison.”

“Who?”

Crowley shook his head. “Never mind that.” Then he held out his hand to Aziraphale, feeling impulsive. “We’re going to dance.”

Aziraphale froze. “Oh, no,” he said with a panicked laugh. “I don’t dance. Angels don’t dance.” He paused. “Unless it’s the gavotte, which I’ve gotten quite good at.”

“Ah, come on, Aziraphale.”

Crowley was already dancing, wiggling his hips in some kind of odd rhythm that definitely didn’t match the song. Watching him, Aziraphale felt something flutter in his stomach that he couldn’t quite define. Setting his wine down on the table, he thought to heck with it and stood up to join the dance.

The demon pulled him in by the wrist, bringing them into one another’s orbits, closer than they’d ever been before. In circles they twirled around one another in that strange, otherworldly rhythm that possessed both of them as they moved to the song. Aziraphale reached to clasp a hand in Crowley’s, settled the other on his hip, and Crowley didn’t stop him. When they finally met each other’s eyes, Crowley’s half-lidded and inscrutable, Aziraphale’s wide-open and bright, something shifted between them that they were both too drunk to fully comprehend. 

There had always been mutual feelings of affection for one another—being friends for over 6,000 years tended to do that—but this felt different. Charged. Like there was a possibility that those feelings could be something more than just friendship. Just as Crowley contemplated leaning in, to try that…kissing thing he’d seen mortals do, the song ended. Aziraphale stepped back, face flushed and a smile on his lips.

“Well, that wasn’t so bad,” he said. “I rather liked dancing just then.”

“You weren’t as bad as I thought you’d be,” Crowley said.

Knowing he needed to get home somehow, Crowley decided it was best to sober up; he wasn’t enough of a bastard to chance drinking and driving. Both he and Aziraphale sucked the alcohol out of their bodies, straightened up, and tried to ignore the impending headaches that would surely be coming their way. Hangovers were a beast sometimes, even as an immortal.

Just as Crowley laid a hand on the doorknob, Aziraphale stopped him.

“Crowley, I—” Whatever he had been about to say stuck on his tongue as Crowley looked at him, waiting. He smiled sheepishly, then shoved a book into Crowley’s hands. It was a collection of Emily Dickinson poems. “Don’t forget our next meeting. At least give this one a chance, maybe you’ll like it.”

Crowley glanced down at the ground, swallowed. “Yeah, right,” he said. “‘Course.”

Book in hand, Crowley pushed open the door to the bookshop and stepped out into the cool night, wondering why he couldn’t get his heart rate to slow down.

* * *

The day after their dance, Crowley had gone home and tried to read through the entirety of this poetry collection so he and Aziraphale could actually have a proper discussion at their next meeting. But as he laid sprawled out on his couch, book open on his lap, he had a realization that startled him.

Demons didn’t read for enjoyment. Yet here he was, sat with the most boring set of poems he could’ve ever imagined, all to impress some angel.

Here he was, visiting said angel’s bookshop damn near every day just to spend time with him.

And here he was, still pretending he didn’t have feelings that had surely been growing for centuries now.

He thought about their dance together, how Aziraphale had looked into his eyes with an earnestness that made Crowley feel as though every thread in his heart was being plucked like a damn lute. Then he thought about how he really didn’t care if they were in the bookshop or on Alpha Centauri or in some other galaxy far away from this one—he only wanted to be near Aziraphale.

Tucking the book under his arm, Crowley sprang from the couch, and as he slid into the front seat of the Bentley, cursed himself for having feelings. Cruising at an easy 170 kilometers per hour, he made it to Soho in fifteen minutes flat, cutting the ignition and wasting no time barging into the bookshop. He forced open the door so that it hit the side wall with a bang before he stormed inside. Startled, Aziraphale looked up from his nightly crossword puzzle as the book of Dickinson poems sailed past his head and landed in a heap on the floor.

“Stupid book.”

“Crowley, what are you doing here?” Aziraphale set his crossword down on the end table next to him before standing up and glancing at the pocket watch he kept tucked into the front of his suit. “We’re not supposed to have our book club meeting until tomorrow at—”

In one swift movement, Crowley had Aziraphale pressed up against the bookshelf behind them, noses touching.

“Stupid angel,” he muttered. His eyes searched Aziraphale’s, looking at him with a mixture of affection and something that could possibly, perhaps be love. Demons generally didn’t feel these things, but then again, Crowley had always been a bit different. He pressed their lips together in a chaste but meaningful kiss and drew back after a few seconds. 

Throughout this entire interaction, Aziraphale remained frozen with his arms pinned by his sides. He swallowed as Crowley drew back, his Adam’s apple bobbing and face bright red. “I suppose there’s a first time for everything,” he said.

“You mean you haven’t…either?” Crowley said. In his haste to leave his apartment, he’d forgotten his sunglasses, and even in the dim lighting of the bookshop, Aziraphale could see Crowley’s pupils widen. He was nervous. The thought of the cocky, unflappable, obnoxious Crowley being anxious around him was something that made his heart beat a little faster.

“Nope, never.”

“Blast, I was hoping at least one of us would have done this before.”

“Well, I’m sure we could figure it out,” Aziraphale said with a slight raise of his eyebrows. “We’re nothing if not…inventive.” Truthfully, he’d found the sensation of kissing Crowley rather delightful and was hoping to have another chance at it.

“Right, right.” Crowley’s head bobbed up and down. His voice sounded far away and distant. Then, in a flash, he pulled the lapels of Aziraphale’s jacket and yanked him in for a second kiss.

This time, Aziraphale quickened his response, touching Crowley as they kissed and cradling both sides of his face. When his fingers brushed past the snake tattoo that coiled just below Crowley’s ear, the demon shivered under his touch. From where Crowley had his forearms pinned on the bookshelf, he slid them down so that his fingers skimmed down the sides of Aziraphale’s body, enjoying how this movement elicited a gasp far more than he reasonably should.

So, it hadn’t taken long for the two of them to figure out how to do this whole kissing business. After 6,000 plus years of mutual pining, it only made sense.

Far too soon, Aziraphale pulled away and studied Crowley with his brows knit together, an expression on his face like he was trying to figure out a very complicated math problem. “Not to, ahem, kill the mood or whatever a human might say, but what exactly…prompted all of this?” When he tried to make a gesture with his hands, he realized just how little space was in between them, and his face heated up even more.

Crowley shrugged, trying to be nonchalant. He kept his gaze moving around about Aziraphale’s head so his eyes wouldn’t betray him. “Oh, you know,” he said with the air of someone who very much knew how he felt and was attempting to pretend like he didn’t. “Just realized I’ve been in love with you for a while, or whatever.”

The softness, the awe that touched Aziraphale’s face assured Crowley that his feelings were returned. Pure love was the domain of angels, and when they felt it, they often made no secret of their affection. He brushed his palms over the front of Crowley’s leather jacket as if to dust off imaginary dirt and smiled.

“Would you like to stay? Tonight.” Aziraphale blurted out, fiddling with the ends of his waistcoat. He wouldn’t meet Crowley’s eyes. “We could relax, have a spot of tea. Then maybe we could, erm, resume what we were doing earlier?”

Crowley thought he would like that very much. He was tired of avoiding what should have been acknowledged centuries ago, especially now that the apocalypse was no longer looming over the both of them. They had all the time in the world to spend together.

“Don’t we have a book club meeting tomorrow?” he said, voice teasing, and winked. “Can’t forget about that very important appointment.”

“I suppose we could…delay the book club tomorrow,” Aziraphale said after a moment’s consideration.

“Whatever you’d like, angel.” Crowley grinned, a genuine smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes. He settled into his usual armchair, ready for that night and for the days to come. As long as he was with Aziraphale, he felt certain he wouldn’t mind whatever awaited them for the rest of eternity. “Whatever you’d like.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you made it this far, thank you so much for reading :) I really appreciate it, and hope you enjoyed this fun little story. This was my first time writing for the fandom and I had an absolute blast with these two ineffable idiots.


End file.
